An Update on The Reading List - "Bloodlines" and "Liberating Black Theology"

This Fall/Winter, I have been reading a few books in my spare time and here is an update on the two that I am currently reading. I have finished "Knowing God" by J.I. Packer and "Doctrine" by Mark Driscoll and Gerry Breshears and I am currently reading "Bloodlines:Race, Cross and The Christian" by John Piper and "Liberating Black Theology" by Anthony B. Bradley. Here are two excerpts from the books...some things that have stood out to me. The first excerpt is from John Piper's "Bloodlines"

Racial tensions are rife with pride - the pride of white supremacy, the pride of black power, the pride of intellectual analysis, the pride of anti-intellectual scorn, the pride of loud verbal attack, and the pride of despising silence, the pride that feels secure, and the pride that masks fear. Where pride holds sway, there is no hope for the kind of listening and patience and understanding and openness to correction that relationships require. The gospel of Jesus breaks the power of pride by revealing the magnitude and the ugliness and the deadliness of it, even as it provides deliverance from it. The gospel makes plain that I am so hopelessly sinful and my debt before God was so huge that my salvation required the death of the Son of God in my place. This is devastating to the human ego. And God means it to be: "By grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast" (Eph. 2:8-9). He saves us by grace alone so that we would boast in him alone. Pride is shattered...Imagine what race relations and racial controversies would look like if the participants were all dead to pride and deeply humble before God and each other.

This excerpt is from Bradley's "Liberating Black Theology"

The fact of the Fall and the accomplished redemptive work of Christ serve as the true foundation for the liberation of black people. The fruits of Christ's sacrifice are not restricted to any one group of people because of our common human solidarity as sinners. Bavinck describes three benefits that accrue from the reconciliation of God through Christ: "(1) juridicial - that forgiveness of sins is our justification, mystical - consisting of the Christ being crucified, buried, raised, and being seated with Christ in heaven, ethical - through regeneration and being made alive, (2) moral - consisting in the imitation of Christ, economic - in the fulfillment of the Old Testament covenant and the inaguration of the new covenant , and (3) physical - in our victory over the world, death, hell, and Satan."

I'm sure there will be more to come from these books. I recommend both - they are filled with great content and they walk through the gospel and how it applies to racial issues in the world we live in.